My book, The Squeaky Wheel, opens with a story about New York City real-estate. In the midst of last decade’s real-estate boom an apartment building was built on a vacant lot 20 feet from my building, causing months of terrible noise as large machines bored into the bedrock (known as Manhattan Schist). Everyone in my building complained about the noise but our landlord was not responsible and he turned down all their complaints. I also wrote a complaint letter and to my surprise, it was so effective that he agreed to lower my rent as a result. In the chapter, I discuss what (psychologically) made my neighbor’s efforts ineffective and I explain the practical and psychological ingredients that made my own efforts successful.
A writer for the New York Times mentioned this story in an article she wrote last week about complaining to mortgage lenders. This week, The Herald Tribune picked up the story and decided to lead with a picture ‘depicting’ me writing my letter to the landlord. Here it is:

The image they used is hilarious for several reasons. First, I live in downtown Manhattan and not the mountains of Afghanistan. Second, if bombs were going off 20 feet away from our building, surely the other tenants in my building would have made a better case for having their rent reduced as well.

Lastly, I used this story in my book because it illustrated the psychological principles of complaining effectively as well as the negative and defeatist psychological mindsets we often fall prey to when we have a nagging complaint. Blasts going off right outside our homes would no doubt cause an entirely different set of psychological mindsets (not to mention panic, trauma and PTSD) as those who live in war zones can surely attest.